


The Missing Piece

by S_Horne



Series: ShHiatusBang Flash Bang Bingo Team Blue [23]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: A hint of smut, Accidental Soulbond, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 18:46:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14503212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/S_Horne/pseuds/S_Horne
Summary: Alec rubbed at his forehead where he could feel the beginnings of a headache coming on when he suddenly felt a bubble of laughter rise up inside of him. He jumped up from his desk in shock at the unusual feeling and stumbled a little as he tried to catch his balance. What the… Alec didn’t laugh.But even as he told himself that, he felt his cares and worries slowly slipping from his shoulders and his headache began to disappear. There was a feeling of honest-to-God happiness inside of his chest for the first time in months and the urge to laugh was getting stronger and stronger. He couldn’t think of a reason for the feeling other than hysteria. It was true; being in charge of the Institute had finally sent him crazy./A spell gone wrong binds two souls together and the results are... interestingBingo Square:Accidental Soul Bond





	The Missing Piece

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing something like this, but due to a couple of reasons, it's a little rushed. 
> 
> It’s goes in a different direction to canon wherein Magnus is a new warlock who makes a mistake and Alec is a bit of a dick. Quite a bit of a dick, actually.
> 
> Update: I made some editions to the ending because it was left in a way it shouldn't have been.

“Ah.”

“Ah?” Alec repeated loudly. He had come in a professional role as Head of the New York Institute to get help from the newly-appointed High Warlock of Brooklyn and he hadn’t been expecting any unsure ‘ah’s to leave the mouth of the man who was supposed to be solving their problems. Alec looked sharply over at his fellow Shadowhunters and took in their worried expressions, no doubt reflected on his own face, before he looked back to the warlock. He ducked his head to try and catch Magnus’s gaze, but it was to no avail as the warlock bustled around the room and kept his eyes down. “What exactly does ‘ah’ mean? Bane, what does ‘ah’ mean?”

“It means there may have been a slight error in my calculations,” Magnus eventually said, still running around the room as he weaved in and out between the Shadowhunters in his office.

“What?” Isabelle Lightwood was not a large woman, but her voice could stop the waves from crashing and Magnus cast a glance back at her over his shoulder.

“It’s nothing,” Magnus said quickly, though not particularly convincingly, “really; it’s fine.” He suddenly stopped stock still in front of his bookcase and looked at them consideringly, head tipped to one side with his bottom lip between his teeth before he grabbed an armful of books and all but threw them down onto the desk with a loud bang. Everyone else in the room looked around at each other for a few seconds in confusion whilst the warlock flicked through his books rapidly, not halting for a moment until he reached the exact section that he wanted in the fourth book and his eyes scanned the page manically. The longer that Magnus read without saying anything, the more panicked the looks on the Shadowhunters’ faces became. Their expressions ranged from angry to downright terrified to utterly bewildered until Alec spoke again.

“Bane,” Alec barked with all the force of the Head of the New York Institute bleeding into his one shout, “what the hell is going on? We came to you for a spell which would clear the memories of mundane witnesses from the last mission and nothing more. You’re the High Warlock of Brooklyn; you should be able to do this in your sleep.”

“Alec,” Izzy started and placed a hand on her brother’s arm, but he shook it off and marched forward a few steps until he was almost shoulder-to-shoulder with the warlock.

“No,” he argued, “We need this spell to have worked. What did you just–”

“Okay,” Magnus said, cutting over Alec’s raging with a cheery grin. He made no show of having noticed Alec and instead focused on the other Shadowhunters in the room as he closed his book with a forced grin. He rested his hand on the cover as he looked over to his audience with a smile. “We’re good. There is absolutely nothing to worry about,” he promised, “and your spell worked.”

“What?” Jace asked and his eyes flickered between Magnus and Alec, “You were so concerned–”

“Nope,” Magnus said, interrupting again. “The spell will have worked fine. No memories of the incident will be left and you can rest easy once more.”

“What?” Magnus’s eyes finally shot over to Alec’s when the Shadowhunter stepped forward menacingly, “you said that there were complications.”

“None at all, Mister Lightwood. That was my mistake, but it was nothing. The spell I performed was the correct one; all mundanes will have forgotten all about the incident by midnight tonight and I shall have a copy of the incantation produced in case of a repeat occurrence.”

Alec narrowed his eyes at the warlock, silently seething at the unprofessionalism of the so-highly recommended man. “There won’t be a repeat occurrence,” he snapped, “don’t you worry about that. Those rookies are on training runs until they can prove themselves worthy of their runes,” Alec stepped forward and snatched the paper out of Magnus’s hand, “and don’t think that your services will be required again.”

With that, Alec stormed out of the warlock’s apartment, the door banging back against the wall as he went. He barely heard his siblings and his colleagues thanking Bane for his service as he marched away, but he heard his sister yelling his name as she ran after him. 

“Alec!” Izzy yelled as she caught up with her brother outside of Magnus’s building, “what was that?”

“He’s supposed to be the High Warlock of Brooklyn,” Alec seethed as he shook her hand off his arm and whirled around, pointing angrily up to the top floor of the building where they had just come from, “and that poor show was anything but.”

“He’s only been the High Warlock for six months,” Clary cut in, “he’s allowed to make mistakes.”

“No!” Alec roared as he rounded on the redhead next, “ _no one_ is allowed to make mistakes in this business. We went to him for help and–”

“And nothing,” Izzy cut in and brought Alec’s attention back to her, reaching out to take his arm again, “he said that it was fine; we got our spell and nothing went wrong.”

“It better not have,” Alec concluded as he snatched his arm out of reach of his sister and stormed off down the street.

/

When he was finally back at the Institute, Alec slammed his door behind him angrily and threw himself down face-first onto his bed. He buried his face into his pillow and curled his fingers into fists by his sides as he tried to resist the urge to scream and cry.

He couldn’t believe what had happened. It was his fault; all of it had been his fault. _He_ had let that bunch of rookies go out and cause such damage. They had taken out a demon, sure, but done it in front of humans and, as a result, had nearly spilt their secret to their entire Greenwich Village. He’d had to go begging to a _warlock_ to get a spell to reverse it and that in itself had been a total shitshow.

Something had happened, Alec knew it had. He could see it in the warlock’s eyes and the way he had too-easily brushed off the concern that they had all showed. Alec could sense that there was something coming and he really, really did not want to deal with it. His chest was hurting, full as though there was too much inside of him in a strange, emotional kind of way. His head hurt too with so many thoughts swirling around, all too quick to decipher. He took a deep breath as he tried to shut his brain down and get some sleep. He eventually did, though his fitful dreams weren’t his usual sort and he woke up feeling worse than he had when before.

/

Alec had been doing his best to concentrate on the board meeting when he suddenly felt a punch to his stomach and felt as though the bottom of his world had just fallen out. He blinked a few times and let out a long breath of air as he tried to bite down on the feeling of unexplained worry that was bubbling up inside of him. There was a sharp spike of _fear,_ a sudden urge to duck and dive as if he needed to dodge imminent danger. Alec fumbled for his phone and sent off panicked text messages to his siblings, but when their responses came back that they were safe and not out on patrol, he was left feeling confused as well as worried. What the hell was going on? Alec hadn’t felt scared in a long time, not like this. This was all consuming, the sort of fear that made him want to run and hide.

But he couldn’t. There was no logical thing to hide from, no reason for his fear.

Alec stayed in the meeting and tried to push away the urge to join a fight he wasn’t aware of and to protect someone that he was mysteriously worried about for no reason. When the meeting had finally finished he stumbled to his feet and hurried away. He was halfway back to his room when he heard the hushed whispers of two rookie Shadowhunters at the end of the hall, awe filling their voices as they gossiped.

“Did you hear that Magnus Bane took down a group of demons earlier?”

“What?”

Alec stopped short in the corridor and craned his head to listen to the conversation.

“Yeah,” one of them continued, “like an hour ago. We just got back in from patrol and he was coming in to talk to one of the Lightwoods, I think. He took down a group of 12, _single-handedly._ ”

 _Stupid warlock_ , Alec thought to himself, _only a fool would take on 12 demons alone._ Alec ignored the rest of the conversation and slipped into his room unseen and unheard. By the time he had got there, all fear and worry had gone from his chest and had been replaced with something weirdly akin to pride.

/

A few days later, Alec was lying in his bed, his thoughts finally slowing down and his eyes slipping closed when he felt a low stirring in the pit of his stomach and a tingle in his legs. Alec was suddenly wide awake as a heat pooled inside of him and he felt the stirrings of something very unfamiliar. He didn’t know what the burning was, some sort of scorching fire that spread through his body unlike anything he had felt before. Alec knew what sex was but, despite his siblings’ pestering, it wasn’t something he had ever desired or went out of way for. But this… this was a feeling he had never had before and it was making him _want._

He balled his hands into fists by his sides until he could hold out no longer and hastily pulled open his pants to thrust one hand down them, teeth biting his lip painfully to stop himself from crying out at the pleasure. He made short work of the task and before too long he was coming, one hand fisted in the sheets beneath him as the other worked quickly over his shaft, breath coming in pants and eyes screwed closed. They flew open and his hands went slack when he caught his lips mouthing a name as ropes of come splattered up his chest.

_Magnus._

Where the fuck had that come from?

/

Alec clutched at his arm and took deep, calming breaths as he limped back to his room. He had finished patrol and gotten through debrief as quickly as he could as his arm throbbed painfully and his head swam with nausea. Oh, God, his arm _hurt_. He hadn’t moved out of the way of a demon’s tail fast enough in their battle and the top of his arm had been sliced open, a quick and painful cut that was deep enough to draw blood but not so much that he was useless for the rest of the fight. By the time that he had made it back to his own quarters and had peeled away the tattered remains of his shirt, his arm had stopped hurting. The cut itself was still there, that much Alec could see, but the pain had gone.

How? Nobody knew about the injury he’d sustained – he had made damn sure of that – so he hadn’t taken any medication. And yet the dreadful pain had gone. It felt almost as though there was a gentle touch soothing over the wound, slow circles being rubbed into the tight muscles and the barely-there breath of a kiss on the hot skin.

Alec scoffed at himself as he pulled open his bathroom cabinets to find a clean bandage and shake out a few painkillers from his emergency stash. _A kiss indeed,_ he laughed humourlessly, _what a stupid thought._

/

Alec rubbed at his forehead where he could feel the beginnings of a headache coming on when he suddenly felt a bubble of laughter rise up inside of him. He jumped up from his desk in shock at the unusual feeling and stumbled a little as he tried to catch his balance. What the… Alec didn’t _laugh._

But even as he told himself that, he felt his cares and worries slowly slipping from his shoulders and his headache began to disappear. There was a feeling of honest-to-God happiness inside of his chest for the first time in months and the urge to laugh was getting stronger and stronger. He couldn’t think of a reason for the feeling other than hysteria. It was true; being in charge of the Institute had finally sent him crazy.

He took a deep breath in an attempt to steady himself, but his lips were still curling at the corners so he focused on holding his expression straight and left the office, intent on finding Izzy and asking her what the hell was happening to him. He tried to control his pace and not give in to the urge to race down the corridors to his sister’s quarters. When she wasn’t to be found there he almost screamed, an odd feeling when combined with the happiness still in his chest, but continued on his way to the weapons room; Izzy was normally to be found there if she was going to be anywhere. He rounded the corner and nearly cried when he saw a peek of her dark hair through the open door. He was about three seconds away from bursting into the room when he noticed that his sister wasn’t alone, but that Magnus Bane was standing there with her in the weapons room. That in itself was unusual, but the part that threw Alec was that they were both laughing raucously, their heads thrown back and hands grasping each other’s as their laughs mixed together beautifully. It was an odd sight and made Alec feel uncomfortable for reasons he wasn’t quite sure of.

But the worst part? Was that Alec wanted nothing more than to join them.

/

Alec felt his concentration waver in the middle of a meeting when the words of his notes suddenly began to dance in front of his eyes like leaves in a hurricane. His head span violently. _Why on earth was his head spinning?_ he asked himself as he gripped his pen so hard that he heard the plastic crack in his grasp. His palms were sweaty and his legs were shaking; he felt sick and his heart was pounding in his chest as it threatened to beat right out of him. What on earth was happening to him? His neck tingled and his hair began to stick to his forehead as his temperature skyrocketed. He was going to be sick. _Oh, God_. He was going to be sick.

“Alec, what is wrong with you?”

Alec snapped back to attention at his sister’s hushed words, well, as much as he could with his ears feeling like they were stuffed with cotton wool and a faint buzzing sounding constantly in the back of his head. He cast a discreet look around the meeting room and glared at the couple of people who were looking back at him.

“Nothing,” he told Izzy on a harsh whisper and scrunched his eyes shut at the sudden wave of nausea that washed over him. When it passed, he deflated in his seat and let out a long breath of air, shaky and uneven. He focused back down on the papers in front of him and ignored the look of concern that he could see Izzy throwing him out of the corner of his eye. “I’m fine.”

“You’re clearly not,” Izzy whispered to him and reached a hand discreetly under the table to rest on his bouncing leg where she squeezed gently to try and hold it steady.

“Izzy,” Alec muttered through his clenched teeth, “can you let it go?” He swallowed hard as he was hit with another bout of dizziness and balled his hands into fists in front of him as though that would quell his sickness.

“You’re not well, Alec.”

“Shadowhunters don’t get sick,” Alec forced out when he could open his mouth without feeling as though he was going to bring up everything he had eaten for the past week, “it’s nothing.”

Alec tried to sit there for the rest of the meeting, but found himself on his feet not three minutes later. He made an excuse he could barely even hear before he bolted for the door and all but ran down the hallway.

“I need to see Magnus Bane.”

The Shadowhunter in the cabinet room jumped a mile when Alec marched in, the door slamming into the wall as he did so. God, the words coming out of his mouth were ones that Alec never thought he would say, but he knew what his heart was telling him. The need to see the other man ran deeper than Shadowhunter business and as much as it pained him to reach out for help, Alec needed to know what the hell was happening to his body.

“He’s not here,” the man stammered out.

“What?” Alec tried to refocus his attention on the trembling man in front of him and bit down on yet another wave of nausea before he could reopen his mouth, “I was told that you were the liaison between us and the Warlocks.” The Shadowhunter flinched as Alec advanced with a dark glare and almost spat out his words.

“He was called away last night to deal with an incident. He’s not expected back until the end of the week. I’m sorry, Mr. Lightwood, I – I mean, I could call him for–”

“Where is he?”

“He’s in Europe; there was a problem with–”

“When is he coming back?”

“I don’t know. I was told Tuesday, but that’s only if he can find what he went–”

The man spoke to an empty room when Alec stormed out in anger, his steps echoing as he left.

/

“What the hell did you do?” Alec stormed into Magnus’s apartment and it was a testament to how much the warlock knew he was in the wrong that the wards were down as though he had been expecting the other man. “Bane! What the hell did you do?” Magnus was in his office with his back to Alec as the man stalked in angrily, glass bottles shaking on their shelves when Alec slammed the door closed behind him. A part of Alec shouted at him that he was behaving horribly and to calm down, but the voice couldn't shout loud enough over his anger. “Do you even _know_ what you did?” Alec asked when Magnus didn’t turn around or acknowledge him in any way.

“I’m working on it,” Magnus finally told him. Alec barely refrained from punching the wall next to his head and he settled for growling instead, teeth clenched and nails digging painfully into his palms. “This was an accident,” Magnus continued quietly but fiercely, “this wasn’t meant to happen.”

“Bane!” Alec yelled. “What the fuck did you do?”

Magnus straightened up and turned to face the Shadowhunter, his face steeled into a perfectly blank expression. “It’s a soul connection,” he started slowly, “it’s an ancient spell – one which hasn’t been used for years. I didn’t realise the two were so similar, that and the memory one, I mean. They were written in an old language, one which I’m not particularly versed in.”

“That is not an excuse!” Alec screamed. He took a deep breath when the other man flinched and let it out on a harsh exhale, trying to remind himself to calm down. He wasn't that sort of person, he told himself sternly, even as his blood boiled within his veins. “You are the High Warlock and I am the Head of the New York Institute! You can’t fuck up that badly, Bane.”

“I know,” Magnus said and closed his eyes for a moment. “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. The spell that I used for your mundane problem was the right one, only it had been transcribed in the wrong language. I didn’t realise until I had performed it that it… Well. I thought I could reverse it without an issue. I’m sorry. I did give you the right spell in the end and it did work; I went and checked. But, by then, we’d already – well. You know…”

Alec deflated, even as anger continued to course through him. “I know.” Alec had felt Magnus’s feelings for the two weeks; he knew that Magnus hadn’t done it on purpose and had felt the other man’s anguish over it. It had taken Alec a long time to work out what it was that he was feeling, but once he had realised that the urges that were coming to him and the needs he felt weren’t his, things had fallen into place. It was like there was a magnet inside of him pulling him to someone else, and it didn’t take long for him to work out who his soul wanted. “I understand that it was difficult. I didn’t mean to – I, ugh. This wasn’t what I imagined when we came to you.”

“I understand your anger,” Magnus told him, “I feel it.” Alec scoffed and he felt the tension surge back to him. Yeah, of course Bane fucking did. It went both ways. “I really didn’t mean to, Alexander.”

Alec sighed and tried to uncurl his fingers, slowly letting the stiffness slip from them. As much as he wanted to carry on being angry, the sheer volume of pain and onus that was crashing over him made it hard to blame the other man. It was only him and Alec that was affected, after all. The Shadowhunter world was not, nor were the mundanes that Alec had sworn to protect. “I know. Just tell me you can undo it and we can move on.”

“I can undo it,” Magnus confirmed, his voice soft and his eyes locked on the floor, no hint of confidence to his person.

“Yeah?”

“It took me a long time and trips to Vermont, Spain, Indonesia and China, but I think I’ve found the correct spell,” Magnus continued.

“Good.” Magnus’s face did something complicated at Alec’s clipped reply before it settled on forced casualness and Alec watched as the other man straightened his back and turned back to his desk to flick open yet another book.

“You will need to come back next week.”

“ _What_? Next–”

“I need one more ingredient–”

“Fine,” Alec spat. He was sick and tired of not knowing what were his emotions and what were someone else’s. He had been struggling with the extra feelings inside of him for weeks and hadn’t had any one he could tell about it. The overload of emotions confusing him and jolting him from one side of the scale to the other in the blink of an eye were making him sick and he hated feeling so useless. “Next week,” Alec agreed. “And this had better be gone by then.”

/

When Alec returned to Magnus’s apartment a week later, he looked awful. There were bags under his eyes and there was a weariness to his whole person. He had found it difficult to sleep that week; Magnus had been working tirelessly to complete the spell to break their bond, which meant that he had been running on very little fuel and Alec had felt it all through the day, even when he himself had managed a full night’s sleep. Alec had felt Magnus’s fluctuating emotions of guilt, shame and anger, on top of dealing with running his Institute and regular patrols. The worst part for Alec was the constant need to be close to the other man, the desire and longing that he felt building inside of him to a breaking point whenever he forced himself to stay at home and not seek out the warlock. His concentration was wrecked and his headaches only worsened with every hour that he kept himself from Magnus, but he had not allowed himself to give in.

This time, Alec knocked on the door and waited until Magnus let him in with a tired greeting. Alec let himself be manhandled into the right place in Magnus's office, where the other man lined him up perfectly opposite Magnus for the ritual to begin. There was no small talk and Magnus kept his eyes firmly locked on his work. It wasn’t long before the spell was done, a quick flick of Magnus’s jewellery-clad wrists and an incantation that Alec didn’t have a hope of following and it was done. Over.

Alec opened his mouth to ask if it had worked when he suddenly felt a punch to his stomach and a pull as though a hand had been shoved down his throat and wrapped around his heart. His knees buckled and he reached out to grab at the table edge as he struggled for breath, his throat tightening dangerously. Just as his eyes slipped closed and his grip began to turn slack, he was released and he crumpled to the floor as he gasped deeply, chest heaving as his heart hammered in his chest. Alarm bells were sounding in the back of his mind and his brain was screaming at him to run and run and run, but he forced himself to hold his ground and looked over at Magnus who was reacting in much the same way, his back bent and head thrown back.

Alec reached out for the table edge once more and used it to pull himself back up until he could stand, his legs a little shaky but otherwise stable. He felt… Wow. He felt empty in a way he hadn’t ever done so before, as though an important piece of him was missing. His headache was gone, but so was much more.

“Well,” Magnus said, recovering a little faster than Alec was, “that’s that. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone, but I know that that is a big request. I can do this job, you know, I am capable, whatever you may think.”

“I know,” Alec said softly and Magnus’s gaze finally locked on his. “I know it was an accident and I apologise for the way I have behaved. I just… It’s an unusual feeling, to have emotions that aren’t your own.”

“Believe me,” Magnus began just as softly, “I understand.”

Alec couldn’t help but let out a wry chuckle at that and as he looked over at Magnus, he felt something stir in his chest. "I owe you an apology," he said. He swallowed when Magnus's gaze turned pensive, but he held firm. "The way that I have been acting towards you has been totally unprofessional - no, it's been worse than that. It hasn't been _fair,_ not to you or to any of your fellow Downworlders. I have been completely rude to you and there is absolutely no excuse. I may be the Head of the New York Institute, but you are not my subordinate and I had no right to treat you as one. I was going on the rumours and, what I now presume to be lies, left about warlocks from my elders. I should never have listened and should have been prepared to make my own judgements through my _own_ experiences with you." Magnus squinted up at him and Alec felt like shrinking down, but he needed to finish his speech. "I hope - well, um... I hope that..."  _God_ , Alec didn’t stutter. He was leader of the Institute, he was a _Lightwood._ What the hell was wrong with him? Then again, this was an important apology and he knew that he had to do it right. "I do hope that you will accept my apology, but you have every reason not to. Thank you again, for both spells, and once more, I am deeply sorry. I'm ashamed of myself and will strive to be better, I promise."

Alec turned to leave, but stopped in his tracks when he heard Magnus's tentative voice. “Well, maybe now that the reverse spell is done and we’re not, well, you know, then… Maybe you could start that apology by buying me a drink?”

Alec was stunned into silence. That request had come out of the left field, but for some reason it felt right. There had been something about sharing his thoughts and feelings with this man that had changed something inside of him. Even under Magnus’s stare, Alec stood straight and held the other man’s gaze.

"Really?" he questioned hesitantly, "I was vile to you."

"Yeah," Magnus agreed, "but a martini can go a long way in an apology."

When Magnus's face broke into a soft smile, Alec felt a strange feeling bloom in his chest. What the hell? Maybe the spell hadn’t worked and they were still connected? Alec opened his mouth to ask, but no; he had definitely felt the string be cut and their connection break.

This was something else. It wasn’t a forced and faked bond between the two; it was something a little more real, and Alec had a funny feeling that he knew what it was.

It was something he hadn’t felt in, God, too long.

It was hope.


End file.
